Director Spotlight: 3x Verhoeven / 2x Jarmusch

In continuing with our semi-regular Wednesday night Director’s Spotlight series, we offer up four Wednesdays (and one midnight block) to two directors whose latest film will open at the Belcourt in January: Paul Verhoeven’s ELLE (opening Jan 13) and Jim Jarmusch’s PATERSON (opening Jan 27).

This seminar explores how a Dutch child raised during Nazi occupation amidst resistance fighters, sex workers, artists, and scientists found his way to become the internationally acclaimed one-man vanguard of Dutch narrative cinema in the '70s, the preeminent satirist of post-Reagan America, the foremost innovator in the “gargantuan special effects mainstream tentpole” subgenre of Hollywood filmmaking, an acclaimed theological scholar, and now, approaching 80, a respected (but never respectable) arthouse auteur. Presented by film critic Jason Shawhan.